Bruce Alexander - An Experiment in Treason

“Oh, I can imagine what they are easily enough, but listen, I’ll tell you a secret. You must promise not to tell anyone.”

“I promise.”

“All right, Molly and Mr. Donnelly have an understanding.”

“An understanding? Of what sort?”

“They’re not formally engaged. They’re more or less engaged to be engaged. But Molly assures me that they’ll be married before the coming year is out.”

“Well, I’m pleased to hear it,” said I, “though not truly surprised.”

“But don’t you see? We could get married, too, perhaps have a double wedding.”

“I’m afraid not. They’re Catholic and we … we’re not.”

“Oh, what does that matter? I’ll be seventeen, and you’ll be nineteen, and that’s old enough to be married any way we wish, isn’t it?”

“No, it’s not,” said I quite emphatically, “and let me give you some good reasons why it is not. First of all, if we were to marry next year, I could not support you, for I would have no profession, no job, nothing.”

“Well, I could work, too. I could take over from Molly, for she has promised to teach me to cook.”

“And when you become pregnant?”

“Well … I’ll … I’ll …”

“No, we must wait till I have reached my majority and may pass the bar.”

“But that seems so far in the future.” She hesitated but a moment, then did she blurt forth: “You said we would simply wait till then, did you not?”

“I did.”

“Then we have an understanding! But Jeremy, this is wonderful! We’re engaged to be engaged.”

She jumped to her feet and flew round the table. I had barely time to stand upon my own two feet before she had her arms about me, quite covering my face with kisses. She squeezed me and I, having the hang of it, kissed her back.

To say that we enjoyed ourselves does little to describe our feelings at that moment. Clarissa’s bosom heaved with excitement, as all the while we kissed and fondled. I held her so tight I wondered that I might hurt her. And indeed I thought I might have done, when of a sudden, she threw back her head in what I took to be a swoon.

“Clarissa,” I whispered in fright, “are you all right?”

“Oh, Jeremy,” said she, “I’m so happy.”

Tom Durham left more or less in disgrace, accompanied to the Post Coach House only by his mother. He had engaged a barrow man to haul his sea chest to the coach house. Twas only by chance that I saw them leave, and it happened so because at the hour of their early departure I was just setting off upon my first errand of the day. The barrow man was just loading the sea chest. He was a bigger, and I may say, stronger man than I, and he had difficulty with it; I wondered who would have supposed that I could simply throw it up on my shoulder and trudge off to the coach house. Tom would have been better able than I.

I considered the situation, as mother and son gave their attention to the travail of the barro-w man, and I decided that I must offer some sort of good-bye. And so I stepped over to Tom, touched him lightly upon the arm, and offered my hand.

“Tom,” said I, “I wish you all the best in the pursuit of your career.”

He looked down at my outstretched hand so long that I thought he would refuse it — yet he did not. Reluctantly, he took it with his own and gave it an indifferent shake.

“Thank-you,” said he, and that was indeed all he said to me.

Lady Fielding smiled a bit too brightly. “Remember, Tom?” said she, chiming in, “Sir John had given Jeremy an important task and therefore he could not accompany us.”

“Yes, Mother, I remember.” And then, to the barrow man: “Ready? Then let us be off.”

He, without a look back, and she, giving me an uncharacteristically timid wave of the fingers, did set off in the proper direction, with the wheelbarrow following behind.

True enough. Sir John had given me an early task to perform. He had.urged me to bring in Arthur Lee if ever I wished to have him interrogated. “You do wish that, don’t you?” he had said to me. “I can recall when there was naught you wanted more. Or are you no longer so certain that it was Lee gave Franklin those pestiferous letters?”

I assured him that I was just as certain as I had ever been.

“Well, you had better go out and get him. And do it now, else I be called a liar by my wife. I’ve already made your excuses to her. I told her you would be unavailable to serve as Tom’s porter.”

And so I had left, and just outside the door to Number 4, I encountered the two, mother and son. There followed the brief scene that I have just described. I’ve no idea why Tom acted so boorishly toward me. Perhaps he now thought of me as no more than a deckhand.

I remember well that all the way to Tavistock Street I fretted over a problem that was truly none of my own. I was worrying over whether or not to reveal to Sir John what sort this fellow Burkett ‘was truly. He seemed to me to be naught but a villain, for he had treated Bess cruelly and made a fearful threat to Mr. Perkins. Yet in the end, of course, I came to the only possible decision: If anyone were to report this to Sir John, it would have to be Constable Oliver Perkins himself.

Mr. Donnelly was certainly correct in supposing that I would know the building in which Mr. Lee dwelled. I had a fair picture of it in my mind when it was first mentioned — two stories above the ground, red brick with a flat roof — and I spied it easily from a goodly distance away.

It was early, just past seven, and still dark but for the gray half-light of dawn. Still, candles burned in a window or two or three; the residents seemed now to be rising to meet the day.

I went up the two steps, tried the door, and found it locked, as I expected. Then did I begin beating upon it with such energy that I expected to rouse all in the building. Yet only one came, and he a man of sixty years or more. He had rheumy eyes and a bad case of the sniffles.

“What will you, you young wild man?”

“Naught but a bit of help from you,” said I to him. “I am come from the Bow Street Court at the direction of Sir John Fielding to talk with one of those who lives here in this building.”

“What is his name?”

“Arthur Lee, and he lives upon the floor above.”

“Ah, Mr. Lee, is it? He was one of our best tenants.”

“‘Was,‘you say? Where is he gone?”

“Back to America, as I understands it. I don’t know to what part, for I ain’t well-acquaint with that side of the world.”

“When was this?” I asked. “Surely not so long ago.”

“Oh no, not long ago at all. Just last Thursday, it was — day before yesterday.”

That, I mused, would make it the day before Dr. Franklin’s public notice in the Chronicle: He had but a day to get out of London.

“He was in a great hurry, he was. He said he had a ship to catch. There was much he left behind, so it took a lot of cleaning up after him, but I can’t complain.”

“Why not?”

“Always paid on time and in full, and because of the way he left it, he gave a bit extra to me to get the place clean. I ain’t no fool. I cleaned the place up, and kep’ it for myself. You can look at it if you want to but like I told the other fella, there’s nothing up there now, so it don’t — “

“Wait,” said L “What did you say about another fella?”

“Oh, didn’t I tell you about him? No, I guess I didn’t. Believe it or not, just as you choose, but you’re the second come by this morning asking after Mr. Lee. And it’s pretty early in the day yet. I wonder how many will come looking for him before the day is through.”